This is the next instalment of the serialisation of my book – The Teeth of our Exertions – full details of which can be found here.
Scared of the cost
The second thing that we fear is all that we presume we will have to give up in order to go. We will spend some time looking at some of the things we will actually have to give up in Chapter 4. But, at this point, we need only note that we make presumptions about what we must give up and then find the prospect unbearable.
Speaking about his desire to see class distinctions abolished, George Orwell captured something of this thinking well:
To get outside the class-racket I have got to suppress not merely my private snobbishness, but most of my other tastes and prejudices as well, I have got to alter myself so completely that at the end I should hardly be recognisable as the same person. What is involved is not merely the amelioration of working-class conditions, nor an avoidance of the more stupid forms of snobbery, but a complete abandonment of the upper-class and middle-class attitudes to life. And whether I say Yes or No probably depends upon the extent to which I grasp what is demanded of me.[1]
We assume that we will have to give up all our middle-class aspirations. We fear the area we will live in and the house we will have to buy. We convince ourselves that we are condemning our children to an education that will certainly fail them. We worry that we are, nigh-on, guaranteeing drug-use and pregnancy when our children reach their teens. We fundamentally worry that we will be unsafe, uncomfortable, constantly under threat and our life will not be worth living.
As if that isn’t enough, we fear what it will do to us personally. Again, Orwell is helpful in clarifying our attitude. He suggests, in relation to the class question, that we are all ultimately agreed that improving life for the working classes is manifestly good. He suggests we all want to see class distinctions abolished but that we want to do so at no cost to ourselves. But he says merely wishing it will not bring it to pass, noting ‘the fact that has got to be faced is that abolishing class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself’.[2]
That is essentially our attitude to church in deprived communities. Most of us are agreed that the poor and deprived need the gospel. No Christian who loves Christ and takes the Bible seriously would ever suggest that we don’t need churches in these places. If we could wish them into existence and support them without any cost to ourselves, we would have a church in every deprived community in the country. But, as Orwell rightly notes, the fact that must be grasped is that just wishing will not make it happen. Moreover, there will inevitably be a cost. Our fear is that moving to a deprived community means abolishing a part of ourselves. Not only do we worry about giving up our desires and aspirations, we think that the person we are must die. As Orwell put it, we fear that those in deprived communities calling us to come ‘are asking us to commit suicide’.[3]
Some of these presumptions may be true, though certainly not all of them. But whether true or not, the real question here is whether we will allow our fear to dictate what is right. The question should not be, what are we scared of (though it may be right to acknowledge those things as real fears). The pertinent question is, what does Christ call us to do and does Scripture tell us it is right?
[1] Orwell, G., The Road to Wigan Pier, Penguin Books, (London, UK, 2001), p.150
[2] Ibid., p.149
[3] Ibid., p.157